We need to start a social networking site for Lightworkers!
For those who are not aware, Facebook is a CIA application – see news story here:
Is Twitter next? Perhaps Twitter is also being used? I’m closing my accounts today.
Is the CIA Following You on Twitter?
source: http://mashable.com/2009/12/02/eff-government-lawsuit/
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit group dedicated to defending the freedoms of individuals in the digital age, thinks the U.S. government may be violating the privacy of individuals who post content to Facebook and Twitter.
The organization has filed suit in San Francisco’s U.S. District Court, Northern District, against the Department of Defense, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in order to get “information concerning the government’s use of social-networking websites for investigative and data gathering purposes to help inform Congress and the public about the effect of such uses and purposes on citizens’ privacy rights and associated legal protections.”
According to the complaint, EFF is aware that the government is using content posted to social media sites in their investigations. After their initial requests for more information and documentation on the specific policies around these activities went unanswered, the EFF began seeking a court order to force the government’s hand in full disclosure.
One of the incidents cited in the complaint was the widely publicized FBI search of an activist’s home, which came after the man in question used radio scanners to post the movements of police on Twitter during the G-20 Summit.
From the complaint:
“Although the Federal Government clearly uses social-networking websites to collect information, often for laudable reasons, it has not clarified the scope of its use of social-networking websites or disclosed what restrictions and oversight is in place to prevent abuse.”
While it should come as no surprise that the government would be monitoring social media sites for information (earlier in the year the White House sought to hire a social media archivist, while the CIA invested in a social media monitoring firm), it does seem that the EFF has a valid complaint, and that the public should know the scope of the government’s monitoring activities.
The full 8-page complaint is embedded below. We’re curious to see how this all plays out, so we’ll keep you posted on new developments. http://www.scribd.com/doc/23516518/Social-Networking-FOIA-Complaint-Final
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I do not agree with the opinions in this article, it simply shows that all of our public conversations on social media are watched closely, and with the Patriot Act and recent laws being passed, our government can arrest and detain us without trial for any reason.
Yes, The CIA’s ‘Ninja Librarians’ Are Tracking Twitter And Facebook
The Associated Press recently reported an “exclusive” story that the CIA monitors Twitter and Facebook as sources of intelligence. The AP reports that the CIA has several hundred “ninja librarian” analysts in an Open Source Center in an industrial park at some unspecified location in Virginia. If you’re surprised, you haven’t been paying attention.
The news that the CIA gets information from social networks isn’t new. The CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel has been openly investing in start-ups, such as Visible Technologies, that specialize in social media monitoring. What is novel about the AP story is that the reporter got to tour the CIA’s social media spying facility:
In an anonymous industrial park, CIA analysts who jokingly call themselves the “ninja librarians” are mining the mass of information people publish about themselves overseas, tracking everything from common public opinion to revolutions.
The group’s effort gives the White House a daily snapshot of the world built from tweets, newspaper articles and Facebook updates.
The agency’s Open Source Center sometimes looks at 5 million tweets a day. The analysts are also checking out TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that people can access and contribute to openly…
Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn’t know exactly when revolution might hit, says the center’s director, Doug Naquin.
via The Associated Press: AP Exclusive: CIA tracks revolt by Tweet, Facebook.
While the CIA’s center is focused on threats (and Tweeps) abroad, the Department of Homeland Security has indicated that it would like to set up its own center for doing this domestically. This seems to be coming as a surprise to some people, but it shouldn’t. If they weren’t monitoring what’s being said publicly on the Internet, it’d be a little disappointing, wouldn’t it?
It’s not like police secretly putting GPS trackers on cars and tracking someone without their knowledge. Reading Twitter and blogs isn’t “spying,”says Steve Ragan in the Tech Herald. Every time we say something publicly on the Web, we do so knowing that it will be seen by others, tracked and archived. Now you know that Google is not the only one watching.
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That goes for Google+ too.
http://www.infowars.com/dont-be-evil-10-ways-in-which-google-runs-the-world/
Don’t Be Evil? 10 Ways In Which Google Runs The World
Steve Watson & Paul Watson
Infowars.com
February 18, 2011
As far as mega corporations in bed with the government go, Google sits somewhere close to the top of the tree. The company was seeded with CIA money and is literally a corporate arm of the intelligence community.
The following ten facts highlight how much influence Google has, and how the company has seemingly abandoned its own corporate motto, “Don’t be evil”.
#1 – Google has intimate and long standing connections to government spy networks.
The company has established a close working relationship with the National Security Agency, the government spy force responsible for warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails in the wake of 9/11. Google is supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information.
Google’s partnership with the intelligence network is not new. As we reported in late 2006, An ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele has claimed sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground.
Recent disclosures under the Freedom Of Information Act have also revealed that the federal government has several contracts with social media outlets, including Youtube which is owned by Google. The contracts are said to waive rules on monitoring users and permit companies to track visitors to government web sites for advertising purposes.
#2 – Google is one of the corporations at the forefront of the government’s drive to use cybersecurity as a pretext for restricting the openness of the Internet.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that government regulation of Internet service providers (ISPs) is necessary. In fact, he said he thinks the entire concept of the Internet marketplace relies on it.
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/9612
Ex-CIA Agent States Google is “In Bed With” the CIA
Submitted by kidmercury on Sat, 2006-10-28 06:52
Former CIA clandestine case officer Robert Steele has stated that Google is “in bed with” the CIA, as his contacts within the CIA confirm.
“I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government – that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off,” said the ex-CIA man.
“Google was a little hypocritical when they were refusing to honor a Department of Justice request for information because they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development,” said Steele.
The CIA has admitted initiatitves to control media in the past — is this just the next logical step? And could this be connected to Google’s interest in its political truth detector?
This comes shortly on the heels of Google resetting the views to the Alex Jones movie Terrorstorm, which focuses on the history of terrorism sponsored by intelligence agencies.